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Well, we already knew full well that the first add-on content for Splash Damage’s bold team-based shooter Brink would be a freebie for a limited time, but what we didn’t know is when it would turn up. Of course, I’ve gone and ruined all the mystery by writing it in the headline, haven’t I? Man, I am an SEO expert’s worst nightmare. ‘Always ask a question if you want to soullessly farm traffic’, that’s the rule. Why don’t we do that? Why don’t we do it for every post? Why don’t you read on to find out? Or at least to find out what’s in Brink: Agents of Change? WHY DON’T YOU? WHY? DON’T YOU LOVE US? DON’T YOU WANT US TO HAVE PRECIOUS, PRECIOUS, HITS? WHYYYYYYYYYYYY?
Agents of Change, then. It contains two all-new environments, five new player abilities, two new outfits, and two new weapon attachments, and it’s released on August 3 – as in, next Wednesday. It’ll be free to download for the next two weeks, but if you’re later than that you’ll have to pay for it. It’s free forever for those who did grab it on time though, don’t worry -they’re not going to drop a fee on you two weeks later.

Here’s the full list of content. We’ve run it before, but hey, any excuse to bust out the ‘Sad Punk':

New Maps

Founders’ Tower – The revolution finally reaches the island’s iconic spire and takes the battle for the Ark to dizzying heights.
Labs – Venture into the depths of the Ark’s original research and development laboratories, a submerged high-tech facility so far untouched by the civil war.

New Player Abilities

UAV – This stealthy and lethal device allows Operatives to automatically mark nearby enemies on their radar. For more explosive fun, they can even take direct control of the UAV and detonate it near unsuspecting foes.
Napalm Grenade – Soldiers can use this new grenade to cover an area in a sea of deadly flames.
Pyro Mine – Engineers can plant these mines and leave enemies in the epicenter of a massive napalm explosion.
Field Regen Unit – Medics can deploy these units to increase the health regeneration of any nearby teammates.
Tactical Scanner – This universal ability allows players to reveal the active buffs of their opponents, allowing them to pick off enemies more strategically.

In this case the cost of entry for new players is $0. The game is dead, no one should buy it. The multiplayer is very low on players and the single player is non-existent. Splash Damage screwed up on this game, one of the biggest game screw ups in a long time.

And it’s incredibly short-sighted to charge for content in Brink’s case, where the playerbase has become so small and the backlash was so fervent. It needs a Killing-Floor-level of support to survive, as far as I can tell.

This is not paid DLC, anyone who wanted to get this will get it in two weeks, to be honest I don’t know why there doing that 2 week thing but it doesn’t really matter. Also this game is a good game, i hate people pissing on it. The game is about the chokepoints in the map, and the siege mentality. Its about teamwork. And the SMART system is incredibly great, a lot of the maps have loads of points to get around people.

Your non-misleading headlines are one of the many reasons why I continue to frequent this site. (It certainly doesn’t help that you’re probably the best PC-centric gaming site on the web) Lots of misleading article titles with little content of interest to me (*cough*Kotaku*cough*) is a surefire way to make me stop coming back.

I right out of the gate “hate” what they did with the website in the last year. And my firefox is not able to save the old view option somehow, or they prevent that in a way. I don’t know. Not there anymore..

I think that this is the precise reason not many people play. Personally, I started playing the single player game and was incredibly disappointed. It wasn’t until I played a good couple of hours of multiplayer did I realise that there was a very good game here, although still hindered when teammates didn’t know what they were doing.

I think selling this as having a fully fledged single player was a big mistake and created the wrong impression. They could have also sold it at a cheaper price. I managed to get it during a Direct2Drive 25% off pre-order deal, which was reasonable, but full price retail probably put a lot of people off what is basically a multiplayer only title.

Having said, the also great Section 8: Prejudice didn’t fair much better at a reduced price

How about a patch to remove the crippling autoaim console nature of all the class defining abilities? I lost count of how many times I tried to slide across a dangerous area to resurrect a team mate, only to have the autoaim thing associated with throwing the syringe spin me around in a complete circle. Spitting me out moving in exactly the direction I was sliding to avoid in the first place!

Sorry about that particular war flashback. I have just made it clear to myself why it was uninstalled, and why I won’t be re-downloading the whole thing for a freebie I will never play. Which is just as well looking at the steam figures.

I didn’t like the look of any of the trailers, but then a friend was getting it and I figured it’d be a fun multiplayer manshooting game, but no. It’s just a bit shit.

I’ve got to say, I’m surprised RPS wasn’t harder on it than they were. It had awful netcode, shitty menus, lots of bugs, and maps that clashed horribly with the design.

To digress somewhat, I’ve got to say that I don’t want games with health any more. It just feels silly. I don’t really want to die quickly either, as in MW2 on hardcore (which I actually prefer, as people are less bullet spongy (yes, I enjoy Modern Warfare 2. I’m really disappointed that people here tend to shun it when it’s a vastly better game than Call of Duty 4 :/ )).
Really, the only game that’s been doing it for me recently is The Specialists, which me and my brother have been making maps for, playing with the rather good bots. I feel it takes all the best elements of Action Half-life (except the bleeding) and really polishes them a lot.
It feels good to empty an entire Uzi at someone across a street and barely hit them once. It’s cinematic, but not in a scripted way. The same way you get Band of Brothers moments in Arma 2, you get these incredibly memorable moments that just feel so much better than anything you can get from most commercial games these days.

I was playing Hockey? a couple of days ago, and I still wasn’t really any good at it, but I got lucky and somehow managed to guide the puck halfway down the rink, and then smashed it sideways into the goal. It felt absurdly good- it was in every sense, a triumph. Moments of intense concentration followed by exhalation and the realisation that you’re perhaps six inches away from the monitor.

My cousins came to play some games last weekend, and after playing Descent, Agricola, and Dominion, we decided to buy Jamestown.
Jamestown was fucking ridiculous. On the first level, we muddled through. On the second level we suffered because we’d bought the second ship, which is a bitch to control properly. On the third level, we shined. The obvious improvement was quite incredible, moreso because we’d -all- visibly improved. In the end, we played Jamestown until something like one in the morning, getting to Divine difficulty.
We also brought Artemis Bridge Simulator, which is fucking excellent, especially if you turn up the difficulty. I’m hoping for mod support on that one.

Yeah, regenerating health is what I meant. I’ve never had a problem with it.
I recently read a very convincing blog post that essentially said that it changes health to something that you worry about per encounter, rather than something that can potentially make it impossible to proceed without loading an earlier save.

I suppose my preference for regenerating health is odd, given that my favourite health system in an FPS ever was in Call of Cthulhu.

Also, to take my own quote literally, I’ve got to say that games where health (and thus dying) isn’t even a concern would be quite pleasing.

I didn’t have unrealistic expectations of an end-all-be-all game and I quite like it. I wasn’t looking for (or expecting) a TF2 usurper, even if it was marketed as such. I mean, not to sound too partisanly defensive, but who markets their product as the next-/third-/fourth-best alternative? I was looking for a complementary dish – a role which the game fulfills quite well on its own merits.

It isn’t as insta-play easy or as much of a crowdpleaser as TF2. The teams are smaller and every clueless camper not actively pursuing objectives and resupplying/buffing/healing/resurrecting is not only unhelpful but also an outright hindrance to your team’s success.

It has its issues, its reception has been marmite-esquely divisive, but in my opinion I think it stands on its own legs quite well as a more of a niche-game. It also helps that the effort they’ve put in visual and aural presentation shines through. The audio in particular is in the same league as DICE’s recent productions.

Picked up PS3 Brink for $20 on Amazon the other day (Deal of the Day thingy). It’s really quite fun when the AI isn’t mucking things up. (Which is often, sadly.) Again, this was PS3 so I didn’t sweat the console graphics/UI. On PC I think I’d get pretty frustrated.